BLASE CENDRARS ~

 

R E A D    M E

    Reaktion Books, 2022

ARCHIVE: CLARICE LISPECTOR ~

 

C L A R I C E     L I S P E C T O R

The Apple in the Dark

New Directions

2023

THE WOMAN WHO KILLED THE FISH ~

 

R E A D    M E

New Directions, 2022

MARVIN GAYE ~

 

1973

HAPPILY ~

 

H A P P I L Y

     Random House, 2023

CASCADIAN ZEN ~

 

R E A D    M E

Watershed Press

Seattle

2023

PIERRE DRIEU LA ROCHELLE ~

R E A D    M E 

New York Review of Books

2023

N. SCOTT MOMADAY ~

 

N. SCOTT MOMADAY 

1934 ~ 2024

Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Albuquerque Journal, via ZUMA Wire, via Alamy Live News

FREAK KINGDOM (HUNTER S. THOMPSON) ~

 

R E A D     M E

Public Affairs

2018

THE ULTIMATE ELMORE JAMES ~

 

WILD SEED ~

 

1965

SERHIY ZHADAN ~

 

From CATALOGUE OF SHIPS (2020)

This is how you stand for a family photo,

look into the eyes of the photographer

the way you'd look into the eyes of a bird

perching outside your window:

remember me, wrathful bird's eye,

when we meet next time,

on the other side of this piercing — like a scream — life,

on the other side of anxious—like a stream— solitude.

Remember my hands,

still without poisonous ink under the fingernails,

remember my voice

which still doesn't have the nails of a man's rage,

remember the gratitude of children

who take sweets on Easter day from the gravestones

of their parents.

In forty years I won't talk in my dreams

with dead characters from novels I've read.

There won't be this magnetic moon

above the open fracture of the road.

In forty years no one will hold me

when I jump into May lakes.

Projection booths will be locked,

the tombs of school library stacks looted.

Remember me, history, looking like a bird

forced into the fog of borderlands every year.

Reflections of bright faces on my palms.

Women and men from the 70s like dead planets

illuminate the summer air.

In their dreams children talk with dead captains.

Children emerge from darkness guided by the photographer's voice.

They run across childhood

like lizards running across a road in July.

They stand in the backyard,

staring suspiciously  into the eyes of history.

Sing, dead poets

who've ended up in schoolbooks

like starlings in cages.

In songs they celebrate the motherland

of a sky scorched throughout the summer.

The surgical suture of a poem cleanly re-written darkness.

The black flower of rain slowly grows between rivers.

__________________________

Serhiy Zhadan

A New Orthography

poems translated from the Ukrainian

by John Hennessy & Ostap Kin

Lost Horse Press, 2020

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS ~

 

R E A D    M E

Read it all, and every letter for & against —

he could take it.

Right now, time is running out, every American

should read his essay

"11 September 1973"

— This is how it comes —

       Hachette Book Group, 2024

NANCY CUNARD ~

 

R E A D     M E

St. Martin's, 2023

BOB DYLAN IN THE ATTIC ~

 

I have many of the books on Dylan 

and by Bob Dylan and 

his records and when I

stack the books and all

the recordings on top

of one another the stack

gets to be over six feet tall.

Bob Dylan in the Attic

is easily one of the best

of the latest books.

It's a slim book, a smidge 

over 100 pages, and I 

couldn't put it down.

I won't tell you why.

An explorer finds the why.

[ BA ]

University of Massachusetts

2023

TOMAS TRANSTROMER ~

Solitude  

I

Right here, I was nearly killed one February evening.

The car skidded sideways on the glare ice

to the wrong side of the road. The oncoming cars —

their headlights—getting closer.

My name, my girls, my job

were quietly let go and left behind,

farther and farther away. I was as anonymous

as a boy surrounded by enemies in a schoolyard.

The oncoming traffic had enormous lights.

They shone on me as I steered and steered

in a transparent fear that floated like egg whites.

The seconds expanded—there was room in there—

they were as large as hospitals.

You could almost pause for a bit

and breathe easily

before being crushed.

Then something grabbed hold: a helpful grain of sand

or wonderful gust of wind. The car pulled free

and quickly lurched across the road.

A post shot up and snapped—a sharp clang—then

flew off into the darkness.

Until all was still. I stayed buckled in

and watched as someone came through the snow squall

to see what had become of me.

II

I've been walking around for a long time

in the frozen fields of Ostergotland.

Not a single person in sight.

In other parts of the world

there are those  who are born, live, and die

in a continuous crowd.

To always be visible—to live

in  swarm of eyes—

must lead to a certain facial expression.

A face coated with clay.

The murmuring rises and falls

while between them all, they divide up

the sky, the shadows, the sand grains.

I must be alone

ten minutes in the morning

and ten minutes at night.

—Without a program.

Everyone stands in line for everyone.

Many.

One.

_______________

Tomas Transtromer

The Blue House

Collected Works

Translated by Patty Cline

Copper Canyon Press, 2023

MACHADO DE ASSIS ~

 

R E A D    M E

"The greatest writer ever produced in Latin America"

SUSAN  SONTAG

     DON'T  MISS  THIS  ONE

   Liveright, 2023

LEV RUBINSTEIN, POET ~

 

L E V    R U B I N S T E I N

MASHA GESSEN

DEEP INSIDE THE BLUES ~

 

FOREWORD BY WILLIAM R. FERRIS            PHOTOGRAPHS & INTERVIWS BY MARGO COOPER

R E A D    M E

University of Mississippi, 2023

CAMILO JOSE CELA ~

 

R E A D    M E

ARHOOLIE RECORDS / DOWN HOME MUSIC ~

 

R E A D  &  L I S T E N

YU XUANJI ~

 

Notes of Late Spring

Living in a dark alley behind shambled gates,

I have few companions or friends —

my perfect lover boy only stays on in my dreams.

So whose banquet with fine silks

floats out this fragrant incense,

and what pavilion releases such singing to the wind?

Living just beside the street, the noise of martial drums

shocked me out of my morning sleep.

The screech of magpies in my unused yard

churns up the youthful restlessness I feel.

How can I keep chasing such worldly things

when I know this body

is the same as an untied boat?

______________________

Yu Xuanji

Yin Mountain

The immortal poetry of three Daoist women

translated by Peter Levitt & Rebecca Nie

Shambhala, 2022

HE, LEO (LEW WELCH) ~

 

R E A D    M E

Oregon State University Press

2023

TADEUSZ ROZEWICZ~

A Normal Poet

sometimes I get anxious over the fact

that I am so ordinary

sometime somewhere I've written about it

I'm not worried but I am starting

to think that perhaps it is not

normal when a "poet" is not

a "phenomenon"

it's high time I craft my image as

someone wild, poetic, colorful

part schizophrenic part lover

but the pronlem is I love missionary style

I like taking walks

I am the husband of one wife

in accord with the dictates of the Apostle Paul

I get up at six in the morning

go to the bathroom

and so forth

I don't have a beard

or even a goatee

or curls

falling to my shoulders

for a moment I think about death

revise a poem

then dive into

life

in the evening I tear off

another page from the calendar

September 24, 2007

267th day of the year

sunrise 6:24 a.m.

sunset 6:31 p.m.

on the back of the page

is a recipe for cutlets

fry cutlets in

hot skillet (. . .)

brown on both sides

breading it first (. . .)

before falling asleep I read

a variety of art culture literary

monthlies bimonthlies

and quarterlies

and see (to my surprise)

that the poems of my fellow

poets male and female

slowly come to resemble

my poems

and my old poems

resemble

their new poems

_______________________________

TADEUSZ ROZEWICZ

Sobbing Superpower

translated by Joanna Trzeciak

Norton, 2011

MINA LOY ~

 

M I N A    L O Y

Dalkey Archive,  2011

OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW PLAYS : BLONDE ON BLONDE ~